“How can it be so unclear to her when it's like the fingers on my hand to me?”

“She extended a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.”

“I thought about how I'd held her in my arms and run my hand through her hair, along her cheeks, and down her neck, how her lower lip opened just slightly when I brushed my fingers against her breast...”

“...I couldn't let go of her hand. For a few moments, I looked at the shape of it, the roundness of her fingers. I realized that her hands gave me a sense of comfort because they were the most familiar part of her to me. Those hands had always been in my sight when I was a child. Those were the hands I held crossing the street, the hands that made me lunch and cooked me dinner, the hands that stroked me when I was feeling sad, the hands on the steering wheel driving me all over town, the hands whose rings I had looked at and played with, turning them around on her finger. I knew then that regardless of how we had fought and cried and how adoption had affected us both, those hands, free of words and emotional baggage, encompassed everything. They were pure love-all the love that she had for me.”

“It's good that you can be horrid when neccesary. It's a useful skill."She leaned on her elbow, settling her chin onto her hand. "Funny, my brother never seemed to think so.”

“So, tell me what my fists keep writing, my fingers, they open up like gates when I write...”